


it's a revolution I suppose

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Tomorrow Series - John Marsden
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in some nebulous time between <em>The Other Side of Dawn</em> and <em>While I Live</em>; life is beginning to return to what passes for normal in Wirrawee now, but that doesn't mean that the war is over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's a revolution I suppose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galfridian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/gifts).



> The Tomorrow series characters belong to John Marsden and are used here without permission but with love.
> 
> Unbetaed, because rare fandom betas are hard enough to find even when it's not an hour and twenty-three minutes before the deadline. If anyone has comments on shit that needs changing, please do tell me!
> 
> * * *

after the war we said we'd fight together  
I guess we thought that's just what humans do

\-- Ellie Goulding, 'Anything Could Happen'

* * *

‘Heard from Fi lately?’

I side-eyed Gavin and nearly kicked a turkey in the process. ‘What makes you ask?’

He adroitly dodged the question by pretending he hadn’t heard me, just giving me a wide-eyed look.

‘She’s fine. Working her arse off at school.’ I had to smile; none of us were totally unaffected, of course, but Fi’s phone calls about the themes and undercurrents in _Angela’s Ashes_ were so beautifully normal. I could imagine her waving her free hand in disgust and then suddenly thinking of something and scribbling it down.

They’d taken _Fly Away Peter_ off the reading list; funny about that.

‘And Lee?’

‘Last I heard he was okay.’ Fi and I talked every second night, more or less; with Lee it was more like every second week, and each time I came away feeling like my emotions had gone through a particularly vicious spin cycle.

‘What about Kevin?’

‘Jesus, Gavin, is right now the time for a D&M?’ I was trying to measure out the right amount of medicine to mix into the turkeys’ feed; it was pretty imprecise since some of them were gluttons and some of them were weedy little corner-hiders, but it was a damn sight better than trying to dose two hundred birds with an eyedropper down the gullet.

He did his best innocent look. ‘Just wondering.’

‘Well, I don’t think we’re all headed for a big family reunion any time soon.’

We’d all gone our separate ways, learning how to live in our new, different worlds. Not that mine was all that different, just smaller. Phone calls and emails were all right, but there were times that I felt as if those of us who had survived were just as dead as Robyn or Corrie or Chris. Except it wasn’t the war that had killed us. It was just distance, and time.

There was one exception to the rule, though; the one other member of our little band of brothers (and sisters) who’d stayed in Wirrawee.

‘Do you ever think about going back to Hell?’

I couldn’t tell him that part of me felt like we’d never left.

 

Two days later I was jouncing and juddering back up the old road, Homer in the passenger seat of the new Landie (where ‘new’ meant ‘third-hand’ and Dad had still taken several hours to say yes to letting me borrow it).

We were only going for one night. Gavin had said he was coming and then bailed at the last minute. But one night to just sit and think and try to say some goodbyes, not just to the people we’d lost for good, but to everyone we’d lost somehow. Like Casey, now she was back in New Zealand with her family. Like Mrs Mackenzie, who although she was living with us drifted through the days like a ghost. Like Fi and Lee and Kevin.

Like ourselves.

I parked the Landie under a shady tree and we both jumped down. We had light packs and basic bedrolls; as soon as we’d swung them onto our backs Homer started for the head of the track. It was a cool day with a breeze that brought the smells and sounds of the bush to us: the rich smell of the earth, the screech of cockies, the flurry and fluster of something startled in the undergrowth.

We didn’t talk much on the way down. Just the occasional ‘thanks’ when Homer held a branch back so it didn’t smack me in the face, or ‘you right?’ when I slipped on a scatter of pebbles. Mostly we concentrated on the journey. The bush had done a lot of growing in the short time since we’d last been down here, and the track was almost as hard to follow as it had been the first time, all those days and weeks and months ago.

 

The bridge was still there, and the old fire circle, and the barer patches of earth where we’d had the tents. The first thing I went to look at up close was something I hadn’t mentioned to Homer before.

‘When did you do that?’ he asked, looking over my shoulder at the names and dates scratched into the wood of what I’d reckoned was the oldest of the gum trees at the edge of the clearing.

‘When we lost them.’ The most recent name was Darina’s; I hadn’t known her date of birth, only barely known her date of death. And I’d only known Chris’s birth month and year but not the day. It didn’t feel right having the details of their lifespans incomplete, but there was nothing I could do about it.

‘Why here?’ I must have given him a funny look because he added, ‘I mean, you were keeping the diary in the Hermit’s hut. Why not there?’

I ran my hand over the silky white bark. ‘Because if a fire comes through here, that hut’s as dry as kindling. A gum tree’s got a better chance of still standing.’

‘If it doesn’t explode.’

‘Thanks, Mr Optimism.’

He just grinned and wandered off to start a fire. We didn’t need it right now, but the nights had been getting cold, and if we were lucky the smoke would keep the mozzies off.

Now that we were down here I still felt like I didn’t quite know what to do. I was still touching the tree, and wondered if I should add to the list, put down those of us who had survived, but it didn’t seem fair to the memories of the others.

But there were other trees, and I had a good knife in my pocket. I took a few steps sideways, closed my eyes for a second to send a silent apology to the tree for hurting it (which was pretty stupid considering how much time I’d spent running around with chainsaws), and started carving.

Not that I ever literally ran with a chainsaw. That would have been a whole other level of stupid.

 

The sun was starting to set by the time I was finished; we’d gotten off to a late start because we were back to operating on farm time, and farm time meant that all the jobs had to get done before anyone went off anywhere. I folded the knife away, reminding myself to sharpen it when I got the chance, and went down to the water to wash the sap off my hands.

‘Do you feel any better now?’ Homer asked.

I thought it over. ‘I guess.’

‘Even if nobody else ever comes down here?’

‘Maybe especially then. But do you think we’ll be able to stop Gavin when he’s a bit older? I’m surprised he bailed this time.’ I unrolled my sleeping bag with one hard shake, checking the ground for snakes before I laid it down.

‘He said he had homework.’

I snorted. ‘And you believed that? He told me he thought he was going to upchuck and that he didn’t want to do it in the car.’

Homer shook his head. ‘Maybe it was both.’

‘Maybe. I can’t imagine him not wanting to spend time with Big Daddy Homer, though. He talks about you a lot.’

‘Hmmm.’ Homer went to put another log on the fire and dropped it in a shower of sparks as something scuttled out of it and over his hand. I snickered as he shook his hand, flicking whatever it was off onto the dirt.

‘It’s times like this I remember we had a bunch of deadly stuff living here before the soldiers turned up.’

‘Remember Fi running into the creek to get away from the snake?’

And just like that we were off, memories spilling out of our mouths as fast as they could come, all the happy and good things, which were a far better memorial than my marks on the trees or the graves back in town. The couple of times I started feeling melancholy, Homer noticed right away and got the conversation back on target.

He really had grown up a hell of a lot.

 

The sky was all the way dark, a few stars shining between the clouds. The moon was almost full, and so bright that it made the dark clouds around it look almost white.

‘Looks like it’s gonna piss down,’ said Homer.

‘You’re so classy.’

‘That’s why you love me.’

I rolled over on my sleeping bag – it was too warm yet to get in it – and poked him in the ribs. He caught my hand and pushed me back over; I got my other hand up into his armpit and wriggled my fingers and he yelped and tried to escape. He refused to let go of my other wrist, though, so he wasn’t really going anywhere. It was lucky we weren’t closer to the fire, considering the way we were rolling around.

We ended up with him on top of me, nose to nose, one of his hands pinning my wrist, my other hand holding his back.

‘Do you get the feeling we’re in a cheesy romantic comedy where the best friends realise they’re really attracted to each other?’ he said, and with the light behind him I couldn’t really see his face to figure out if he was serious or not.

There were other ways of telling, though, one of which was poking me fairly insistently in the thigh.

‘I feel like I know why Gavin wanted just the two of us to be here,’ I said, and Homer laughed before tilting his head the last little bit to bring our mouths together.

It was totally not soft and romantic right from the start. It was wild and passionate and scorching, and I left a bite mark on his shoulder, and he left bruises on my hips. I swear the only time we weren’t making contact in at least five different places was when he went for his pack.

‘Really, Homer, did you _plan_ this?’ I asked when I heard him rip the condom packet open.

He smirked. ‘Had them in there anyway. I was a good Boy Scout.’

‘Bullshit. You nearly set the Scout Hall on fire and they kicked you out when you were nine.’

He came back to me, stretching out a little reservedly beside me at first, but I pulled him on top of me pretty fast and we were right back to clinging together, lips and tongues, hands and – well, everywhere. I could feel the fire warming the soles of my feet and went to say something but apparently he’d noticed as well, because he rolled us over away from it, holding me tight against him. I sat up, putting my hands on his chest for balance. Now I could see his face and he was just grinning up at me, as if this really had been a foregone conclusion.

‘You look great, El,’ he said, as if he was admiring my dress for the deb ball or something, instead of shaping out what few curves I had with his hands, apparently intent on touching me all over.

‘Mmmm. Can you touch – yeah, there.’

‘Like that?’

‘God. _Yeah_.’

 

We ended up with him back on top of me, not really lying on the sleeping bags any more. I could feel sticks and rocks poking into me, and I honestly didn’t care. It was worth it, all of it, to have felt what he did – was doing – to me, and to see his face when he finally let go, the way he bit his lip for a second before apparently remembering that we were in the middle of nowhere and that it didn’t matter if he made noise.

Homer rested on one elbow, playing with my hair with the other hand. I had my ankles tucked behind his knees and wasn’t sure I could muster the effort to move for a while.

‘Where do we go from here?’ I asked.

‘Back to the sleeping bags, unless you want to stay here in the dirt.’

I smacked his shoulder. ‘Homer! You know what I meant.’

‘I don’t want to lose you too, Ellie,’ he said after a moment or two, glancing across the clearing at the engraved trees. ‘I think – I feel like this could go somewhere.’

‘Back to the sleeping bags?’ I said helpfully.

‘I think we can make it further than that,’ he said, and his face was serious enough that I didn’t crack another joke.

A cold drop splashed on my arm, and then another, and Homer pulled back out and off of me so fast it actually made me jump.

‘Bloody Hell.’

‘Yeah.’

 

We ended up rigging his sleeping bag between two shrubs and unzipping mine all the way to lie on underneath it. It was warm enough once we got around to getting dressed again. The rain pattered overhead, thankfully not totally torrential.

He had his arm around me and I thought he was asleep – I was nearly asleep myself – when he spoke up.

‘El?’

‘Mmmm?’

‘I actually did have something in mind for the two of us.’

‘Oh? I didn’t realise you recovered that fast.’

He snorted. ‘You’d be surprised. But no, I meant for when we go back. I was – I’ve been talking to some people. Other kids, from school.’

I felt jealous for a second, but then reminded myself that he was telling me, that he must have meant to tell me. ‘Go on.’

‘There are still people across the border. _Our_ people. People they don’t think we know about.’

I got it straight away. ‘But you think you know where these people are.’

‘I’ve heard a few things.’

I was feeling a few things. Terror. Excitement. And a kind of fierce joy that Homer wanted me there by his side, watching his back, and quite probably doing things to his front at times. ‘So...’

‘So?’

‘When do we start?’

His hand on the back of my head pulled me into a kiss that was slower, sweeter, than the ones we’d been sharing so far. It was a stark contrast to his words: ‘I guess the real question, El, is did we ever really stop?’


End file.
